Posted
by
Unknown Lamer
on Wednesday March 06, 2013 @08:50AM
from the five-minutes-of-revenue dept.

Seeteufel writes "Microsoft's failure to comply with an antitrust settlement about browser choice has severe consequences. The European Commissioner for Competition Almunia set a fine of €561 million (~$732 million) for the unprecedented break of agreement. Microsoft admitted its mistakes and offered further concessions."
A pretty costly bug it seems. From the EC press release: "This is the first time that the Commission has had to fine a company for non-compliance with a commitments decision. In the calculation of the fine the Commission took into account the gravity and duration of the infringement, the need to ensure a deterrent effect of the fine and, as a mitigating circumstance, the fact that Microsoft has cooperated with the Commission and provided information which helped the Commission to investigate the matter efficiently."

This was done under EU anti-monopoly legislation. Microsoft was at the time judged to have a monopoly share of the PC OS market. And as such they couldn't use that monopoly to leverage advantage into the web browser market.

Since neither Google nor Apple have monopoly shares in any OS platform, they should not and cannot be required to do this.

One could argue that since Microsoft Windows is now on the slide, and WebKit based browsers are now the market leader, that the anti-monopoly action against Microsoft is no longer necessary. However that is for a court to decide. Not for Microsoft to simply disregard their obligation.

One of the first acts of the newly appointment George W DOJ was to throw in the towel on the US vs. Microsoft litigation, and give them a soft and warm pat on the wrist. Yep, that's the party that's against crony capitalism.

Look up Apples two year warranty obligations under EU law. They really, really, really don't like it and make the customer believe it's only one year.

That's because Apple has no warranty obligations under EU law for the devices it produces. It has obligations for devices that it sells to consumers, and that would include cameras, hard drives, cables etc. that you buy from Apple that are not made by Apple. Whoever sells you a product made by anyone, including Apple, has obligations towards you.

Let me repeat that: The manufacturer has no obligations. The shop selling to the consumer has.